[767] 'The stormy Hebrides.' Milton's Lycidas, 1. 156.
[768] Boswell was thinking of the passage (p. xxi.) in which Hawkesworth tells how one of Captain Cook's ships was saved by the wind falling. 'If,' he writes, 'it was a natural event, providence is out of the question; at least we can with no more propriety say that providentially the wind ceased, than that providentially the sun rose in the morning. If it was not,' &c. According to Malone the attacks made on Hawkesworth in the newspapers for this passage 'affected him so much that from low spirits he was seized with a nervous fever, which on account of the high living he had indulged in had the more power on him; and he is supposed to have put an end to his life by intentionally taking an immoderate dose of opium.' Prior's Malone, p. 441. Mme. D'Arblay says that these attacks shortened his life. Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 278. He died on Nov. 17 of this year. See ante, i. 252, and ii. 247.
[769] 'After having been detained by storms many days at Sky we left it, as we thought, with a fair wind; but a violent gust, which Bos had a great mind to call a tempest, forced us into Col.' Piozzi Letters, i. 167. 'The wind blew against us in a short time with such violence, that we, being no seasoned sailors, were willing to call it a tempest... The master knew not well whither to go; and our difficulties might, perhaps, have filled a very pathetick page, had not Mr. Maclean of Col... piloted us safe into his own harbour.' Johnson's Works, ix. 117. Sir Walter Scott says, 'Their risque, in a sea full of islands, was very considerable. Indeed, the whole expedition was highly perilous, considering the season of the year, the precarious chance of getting sea-worthy boats, and the ignorance of the Hebrideans, who, notwithstanding the opportunities, I may say the necessities, of their situation, are very careless and unskilful sailors.' Croker's Boswell, p. 362.
[770] For as the tempest drives, I shape my way. FRANCIS. [Horace, Epistles, i. 1. 15.] BOSWELL.
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'Imberbus juvenis, tandem custode remoto, Gaudet equis canibusque, et aprici gramine campi.' 'The youth, whose will no froward tutor bounds, Joys in the sunny field, his horse and hounds.' |
FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poet. 1. 161.
[772] Henry VI, act i. sc. 2.
[773] See ante, i. 468, and iii. 306.
[774] Johnson describes him as 'a gentleman who has lived some time in the East Indies, but, having dethroned no nabob, is not too rich to settle in his own country.' Johnson's Works, ix. 117.